Combining I-Q and/or PolMux optical receiver to enable single detector

A method for reducing optical components at a receiver which include converting an input signal at a receiver to include an interleaving of alternate signal diversity components, the signal diversity components including phase diversity when the converting includes 0 and 90 degree interleaving and the signal diversity components include polarization diversity interleaving when the converting includes interleaved orthogonal polarizations, and combining the signal diversity components for enabling a single photo detection at the receiver to detect the alternative signal diversity components for subsequent analog-to-digital conversion.